Unlit Star (29 page)

"I have the next two days off. They're yours if you want them."

"I want all of them." He sighs, moving back. "But I'll take what I can get."

"You could always come work at the flower shop with me. I'm sure your flower arrangements would be extraordinary."

"You're really not as funny as you think you are, you know that?"

"I'm
funnier
," I say, poking his stomach. A tiny light blinks above his shoulder and I grab his arms and whirl him around. "Look! It's a lightning bug." I bounce on the balls of my feet.

He looks over his shoulder at me. "You act like you've never seen one before."

"I love lightning bugs," I breathe. "I used to spend hours every summer catching and releasing them."

"Like a true fisherman of bugs."

I squint my eyes at him. "Come on—let's catch some." Without waiting for his answer, I skip forward, turning in a circle as I catch blips of glowing orbs in that magical time between partial dark and full. I spy one in the grass by my feet and reach a hand down, holding still as the bug lands on my fingers. "Go on, little buggy, go home before the storm comes." It flies away, lighting up as it goes, and I smile as I straighten.

His breath tickles the side of my neck as he says, "You are the sweetest version of quirky I have ever had the pleasure of seeing in motion."

I laugh softly. "Thank you. Glad you got to see me in action."

He wraps his arms around my midsection and rests his chin on my shoulder. "Don't ever change."

"I do what I want," I say, just to say it.

Rivers' hold tightens. "That's the exact thing I don't want to ever change about you."

I
feel
those words in my heart.

"Are you two ready for the movie?" Monica calls from the doorway. "We made popcorn!" Her enthusiasm over this detail is puzzling. I prefer potato chips.

I move away and look at him. "What movie?"

"No idea."

"It's a romantic comedy," she supplies and we both groan.

Rivers is into his supposedly scary movies, and I, for the most part, like science-fiction movies. Or rather, anything with superheroes in them—or something out of the ordinary, like thrillers that make you think. Traditional story lines are boring; romantic ones are nauseating, and sad movies just plain suck.

"Why can't it be 'X-Men'?" I grumble as we walk toward the house.

"Why can't it be 'The Grudge'?" he counters.

As we reach the door, I look at him and make the sound the ghost in the movie makes—like a bendable straw being straightened out.

His eyes go wide. "What the shit? I didn't know you had it in you."

"Your turn."

He thinks for a minute and then slashes his enclosed hands down at his sides just like Wolverine does and my heart melts. I pat his cheek. "You're a keeper."

IT'S STRANGE HOW SUDDEN IT
happens. I am standing beside my mother, laughing as we prepare a salad, and then I am falling to my knees on the kitchen floor, the pain in my head relentless, so massive I think my brain will literally explode. I almost want it to, just to relieve the pressure. I clutch my forehead and squeeze, nausea filling me, and weightlessness descending upon me. I vaguely note my mom calling my name, but I can barely hear her and I can't see around the agony in my head. Lights pulsate behind my eyelids. Hands are on me, a voice is screaming at me, just before it all goes dark.

I wake up in a white room with a beeping monitor and tubes connected to me. Although there is fog around my brain, at least the pain is gone. But the relief is short-lived with me sitting in the middle of the truth, unable to hide anymore. I panic. The stark whiteness of the room is like a stage and I am the spotlight, trembling with all I have tried to deny. I feel naked, exposed. I can't be here. This can't be happening. Not yet. I refuse to let this happen. I need to leave. If I leave, it isn't really happening. This is
not
my destiny. I don't accept this.
No.

A sob escapes me as I grab for the wires and just as I am about to rip them from my skin, a hand stays me. I look up, the shell keeping me together finally shattering as his stricken eyes find mine. My hand goes limp, falling to my lap, as my truth stares back at me from the eyes of the man I healed only to wound again. Tears are streaming down my face and I can't even care about that now.

My heart is breaking. My heart,
my heart
is Rivers, and it is breaking.

He doesn't say anything. What can he say? He just looks at me like I am already gone, like I already left him, and he is unable to accept it. He looks lost. Knowing I am causing him this pain hurts me more than I can deal with. I didn't want to hurt him. I
don't
want to hurt him, but I am. I am hurting him because I was careless, carefree, and thinking of now instead of farther ahead. I dared to hope. I dared to be selfish. I dared to want a piece of him when he will eventually have nothing of me.

And now look at us, sitting in a hospital room watching one another like we don't know who we are staring at.

It is amazing how steady my voice is as I tell him, “I'm fine.”

Rivers slowly closes his eyes. When he opens them, there is raging light in the endless black depths, lightning bolts of fury aimed right at me. “You're
fine
? That's what you have to say to me? You're fine? Well, I'm glad you're fine, because I sure as hell am
not
fine. So you can be fine while I am not...
fine
,” he grinds out.

“Where's my mom?” I avoid his eyes and his words with my question and the way I fervently search the room. The apprehension is growing—this swirling mass that is called reality is shoving its way into my caricature of a life. I think, if she is just here, this conversation will not happen. I feel sick, so sick. I feel like all of my emotions are building and building and I am going to be ill from them all. They are going to smother me and I will be helpless to stop them.

None of this will happen if my mom would just show up. We won't have to talk about this. This isn't happening. I don't want this to be happening. I am on repeat and I can't shut it off. It is an unbreakable circle of pain and heartache and I am the band keeping it whole. Why can't I keep pretending this isn't happening? I want to go back, even to yesterday, when Rivers was smiling at me, happy, and didn't know I am broken even more than he is.

Everything will be different now. He'll look at me differently. He'll look at me like people look at him. But I never looked at him like he was anything less than complete, and I cannot
stand
the thought that I will see pity in his eyes after today. I would rather not see him at all.

“She went to get coffee. She's been pacing the floor since we got here and she needed a different scene. My mom's with her.” In the next breath, all the anger is gone from his tone and is replaced with overwhelming grief. Despair, so deep his voice cracks under the pressure of it, shows through when he asks, “Why didn't you
tell
me something was wrong?”

I go still, wondering if he knows any of what is truly going on, or simply that something is wrong. What is doctor/patient confidentiality in a matter like this? I was brought in unconscious. They have my medical history and diagnosis on record here, but I am a legal adult. Did I ever specifically say I did not want anyone to know of my situation if something happened to me? I can't remember. Of course they would want to know what the doctors could tell them about my condition, and what it means for me. Would they tell them everything? Taking a deep breath, I fiddle with the tube sucking oxygen into my nostrils each time I inhale. I don't think I can continue the charade, either way.

And don't I owe him the truth? This once arrogant boy, who is maturing into a decent and good man, who gave me purpose when his life was full of despair, and who gave me something to believe in when I was flailing. He gave me a reason to keep going. This being who was never more unflawed than when he thought he was irreparable.

He only had to fracture to allow me in.

“It's odd, but I think maybe I
was
there for you, but I didn't know it right away. That day was the first day I knew something was wrong. I'd just been released. I was numb, just sitting there, trying to come to terms with it all,” I whisper. I swallow and glance at him. “And then you were brought in, and when I saw you, everything sort of clarified for me. I knew what I had to do. It was weird how sudden it was. One minute I was hopeless and the next I found hope again.”

“What are you talking about?” Slow realization crawls over him like the icy waters of a cold, tumultuous sea of finality. His expression clears and just as quickly is filled with shadows once more.

“Wait a minute.” He stares at me, his eyes trailing over my features like he is reminding himself that he knows me, that he has seen my face before, maybe when he wasn't fully aware of it. And he had. “You were there that day—the day of my accident. I remember. You were sitting in a chair in the emergency room when they wheeled me in. You weren't there for me. You couldn't have been. Why were you there?”

I wonder if this is the time for my confession. I've been keeping it inside, refusing to face the truth, denying what is unmistakable even to myself because I don't want it to be real. But it is real and Rivers bringing up the day my world and his world collided and touched in more ways than the obvious, is looking at me with eyes full of unease. He has the right to know, doesn't he?

I turn away from the boy that changed so much because of me; the boy that changed
me.
I look at a painting of the calm waters of the Mississippi River across the room. The waves appear so still, and the picture is so deceptive. Just like me. Just like every breath I am given. What ones sees of me is not what truly is.

I lean forward to touch his ravaged cheek, the bumps and dips of it a work of art to me. I smile, but I know sadness seeps into it. “I didn't plan on this.”

He grabs my hand and holds it against his face, his brows lowered. “Didn't plan on what?”

I put my finger to his lips. He kisses it and a catch forms in my chest. “Just listen. This isn't easy for me to say. I need to take my time with it.”

He nods brusquely, his throat bobbing as he swallows. The intensity of his gaze singes me. I'm going to miss him looking at me. Although, how will I even know I'm missing it? My expression must reveal something of the pain this knowledge gives me because his hands cup the nape of my neck and he tugs me to him, his mouth hungry and urgent against mine. I let my mind slip away for a moment, feeling the sensations he evokes in me, feeling joy and happiness and wholeness I have only felt with a damaged boy. There are tears in the kiss, and as I pull away, I see there are tears on his face and feel my own. He knows something. Even if the doctors told him nothing, he knows anyway.

“I had...an episode. I didn't know what it meant. The pain was so intense—the headache was so bad I passed out. When I woke up, I knew whatever had happened to me wasn't normal. Sometimes I wish I hadn't decided to have it checked out. But I was scared, so I did. They did scans of my brain. The results weren't good. They wanted to do more testing, but I said no. They told me it was inoperable, so what was the point in taking more pictures and whatever else they wanted to do?

“If I hadn't passed out that day, if I hadn't gone to the emergency room at the exact moment I did, I wouldn't have seen you, broken and bloody, as you were brought into the hospital. I was sitting there, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. Your mother and Thomas were in the hallway, crying and holding one another. I'm telling you now, Rivers, Thomas loves you. Maybe not in the way you want or need, but he does. He was scared, grieving. Maybe it was partly from guilt, but it was also because he cares for you. You don't cry for someone like that just because you don't want your mistake found out.” I inhale, looking away from his vulnerable face.

I want to tell him I love him. I love him
so much
. But I know it will be piercing to hear right now, although it will never truly be one hundred percent received with solace. With love, comes pain. But I do, I love him. And I know he loves me too. Even if we have not verbally spoken the words to one another, it is so clear to me. Every glance my way, every touch of his skin against mine, the way he responds to me without being aware of it, even the sound of his voice. I can see everything in a way I wasn't able to before all of this.

I love a boy I pulled from the dark and he loves a girl who will return to it.

“I was in the store a month or so later. I didn't realize it was your mom right away, but it didn't take long for me to realize who I was talking to. She offered the job. I accepted. I'd already known I wanted to help you somehow, I just wasn't sure how yet. It was sort of perfect, in a way.

"I made a choice. I could spend the rest of my time feeling sorry for myself, or I could help someone. Your mom...and you. I could live with the past hovering over me or I could step away from it and be the way I always wanted to be, the way I could have been if I hadn't let everything around me determine who I was. I could choose to be sad, or I could choose to be happy. Life—it's one choice after another. And how our lives are, that's our choice as well.

“Maybe if you hadn't been in that accident, you wouldn't have been able to know the real me. And maybe if I hadn't discovered there was something wrong with me, I wouldn't have been able to
be
the real me. I like to think, it had to happen this way for the two of us to find each other. Because even with all I grieve for, I cannot regret you. I didn't expect to care about you so much. I didn't expect to see past my misconception of you and be rewarded with knowing the real you. I had a goal, Rivers, and you ruined it for me, but I am so glad you did,” I whisper.

He is openly crying and I am crying with him. I think the sound of his anguish is even harder to take than seeing it, but both are equally ravaging to me. His tears are wounds to my heart and I am crying blood for him in return. I try to imagine a life without Rivers, and it guts me. And I know what he is feeling. It would be a world cast in gray, without the sun, without light, without warmth.

My mom and Monica find us together on the bed, our arms locked around each other like if we just keep holding on, we won't lose one another. Monica's mouth pulls down and her eyes water as she takes in the sight, quickly looking away as she inhales sharply. My mom's face crumples and she can't even walk toward us, her legs stiff and immobile. Rivers' mom puts an arm around her to gently prod her forward and they make their way to the bed in a shuffling gait. It makes me think of the first agonizing steps I witnessed Rivers take at the beginning of the summer and my arms tighten around him.

“The doctor will be in soon,” Monica says quietly, her eyes touching on me and resting on her son. “Rivers, let's go for a little walk.”

Torn between where he wants to be and where he needs to be, he carefully disentangles himself from me, giving my forehead a lingering kiss. He sweeps bangs from my eyes and smiles, his gaze steady and true. That smile tears me apart. I hear my mother's broken cry behind him and my eyes burn. He leaves with his mom, glancing back at me as he goes. His expression is panicked and desperate, like he is sure he isn't going to find me, but when our eyes meet, the lines fade a little from his face. Monica puts her hand on his arm and unconsciously rubs it as they walk from the room.